Bikers and babes converge in the Badlands

STURGIS, S.D. -- There are certain items on every motorcyclist's bucket list: The Isle of Man TT, London's Ace Cafe and, every August, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that draws half a million bikers to South Dakota's Black Hills for nine days of two-wheeled debauchery set to a Harley-Davidson soundtrack.

In the two decades I've been riding motorcycles, I've been ticking my way through the biker bucket list, but this week was the first time I ventured to the Badlands. Going in, I was a Sturgis virgin. Now that I've left, I feel significantly less virginal, having witnessed more bikini bike washes and women wearing pasties in public than I thought possible.

My main purpose in visiting Sturgis this year was the return of Indian Motorcycle, but I spent four days wheeling around the annual V-twin confab that plays out for hundreds of miles in every direction -- from Keystone, where visitors can sample the rhubarb wine, to the cliffs of Custer State Park with its spectacular scenery and even more spectacular traffic jams along twisty mountain roads during the 73rd annual rally that is one of the largest biker gatherings in the world.

What is now known as "rally" to the locals and "Sturgis" to bikers began as the Black Hills Classic -- a hill-climbing race with nine motorcycles led by Clarence "Pappy" Hoel in 1938. It's continued every year since, except during World War II, when it was halted due to gasoline rationing.

For the 75th rally in 2015, the crowd is expected to swell to almost a million.

It was the Tuesday before "transition day" this year, when the first wave of rally goers departs and the next wave rolls in, that I set out for Sturgis by way of Deadwood -- and promptly got lost.

"Where's Nemo Road?" I asked BJ's convenience store manager Renae Kampa. "That's the question I wish I had a $100 for every time someone asked."

She ripped a map from a nearby stack. Approximately 63 seconds later, I over heard her fielding the same question with the same answer.

Nemo is a long and windy road through fields populated with horses, cows, deer and, during rally week, lots and lots of hogs.

An idyllic hour's ride brought me to an impromptu rally campground called the Boondocks that included a ferris wheel and what I was looking for -- the highway that would take me to Deadwood.

For a state with a population of 800,000 spread out over 77,000 square miles, it took a long time to make a right turn, and when I did so, it was like joining a jet stream of Harley-Davidsons.

All of us were headed to Deadwood, where a man stood roadside at its entrance, holding a sign that read, "Jesus Loves Bikers, Too."

One wouldn't think so from reading the news. The rally is headline fare every day in the Rapid City Journal, which reports on the arrests and the inevitable deaths from large-scale events involving a lot of bikes and booze. As of Tuesday, four rally goers had died. The South Dakota Highway Patrol had arrested 83 people for drunken driving and another 76 for drugs.

Deadwood is the only town in South Dakota with legalized gambling. Its cobblestoned streets and casinos draw a crowd year round, but it's especially swarmed during rally week, where enterprising businesses had set up pop-up tattoo parlors and were proudly displaying vast selections of bandannas and pasties shaped like hands.

Every other location seemed to be a casino, including Kevin Costner's Midnight Star. That's where I spotted Becky Ehlers -- a mom with her husband and two sons -- the only family I had seen since arriving.

Ehlers, from Millsville, Wis., found out four days before leaving on her family vacation that it overlapped with the rally.

"It's a lot of traffic. A lot of bikers. We were worried when we first came out, but everyone's been real nice," she said.

Rejoining the Harley jet stream for Sturgis, I rode herd into a town that two weeks earlier was far closer to the population figure on its sign: 6,656.

The handful of residents whose homes are situated along "the gauntlet," or main drag, down Lazelle Street have a new twist on the old adage, Loud pipes save lives.

Loud pipes make money.

Before I hit the many tents pimping herds' worth of leather vests and T-shirts with slogans that read, "If you don't limp, you ain't no biker," I rode past numerous lawns that had been rented for camping and motorcycle parking.

Many more were simply sitting in chairs enjoying the show, or, just giving in to it, knowing there wasn't much point in protest.

On a normal day, the Sturgis Police Department has a staff of about six. But during rally week, it swells with imported police from small towns nearby, including Jamie Foster, a 24-year-old who normally serves and protects Moody County, S.D. Patrolling Sturgis for the first time this year by foot, he said, his job is "to make sure everyone has a good time, safely."

His equipment includes a curlicue ear piece for his police radio because "the bikes are so loud," he said.

It was mid-day, and I had just pulled over, after riding miles through town at an average speed of about 3 mph due to an abundance of traffic by riders who preferred bandannas to helmets. I had stopped because I was looking for lunch and opted for the Knuckle Saloon instead of the Loud American, where a singer had just launched in to a rendition of Bret Michaels' "Every Rose has a Thorn" before a crowd of men who could have been Michaels' doppelganger.

Michaels, ZZ Top, Kid Rock and Rob Zombie were among the other shows slated for the 73rd rally at Sturgis-adjacent venues such as the Buffalo Chip, where the entertainment included a show called the Wall of Death, during which a Georgian named Patch McGillicutty sped a dirt bike around the walls of a 24-foot-diameter cylinder, snatching dollar bills from the hands of amazed onlookers perched up above.

Over the nine-day event, Sturgis brings in about $800 million worth of business.

Nick Gerula and Nate Marconeri, both 24, were contributing their share, having trailered their Harleys via Jeep Wrangler for 18 hours. The two were visiting Sturgis for the first time and had stopped at the Buffalo Chip because they had heard they could shoot machine guns.

"If you're riding a bike," Marconeri said, "you've got to do Sturgis at least once in your life."

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